US Government Seizing Webpages

[Norade]

This comes because the site I normally watched sports on was just seized, and already on google you can find the same hosts with their new address providing the same content as before with the exact same url subsitution .net for .me. It just seems like they're playing whack-a-mole trying to stop piracy and frankly I find it stupid to waste people's tax money even trying. Though not providing links or anything because of board rules I will say that 1 person out of 20 in my communications class pays for most music and movies and the rest might buy something they really like. I'd guess that for most people in their 20's this is the way of things.

What are the board's thoughts on this matter?

[Count Chocula]

Theft is theft. You want free music, use Pandora or iheart radio. Free books, look online or copypaste User Fiction or Fanfiction.net. Have you heard of Netflix? Use Gamefly to try before you buy. Does that mean you may have less shit on your hard drive? Yeah, but what you have is yours.

EDIT and to answer your question: the government is clearly operating within its mandate if the Web sites in question are not broadcasting paid for or licensed content. Complaining about it is like bitching that you have to call someone else for your pot because your current supplier is in jail.

[Mr Bean]

Theft is theft.

It's not theft!
Theft requires you deprive someone else of something. I can commit theft by taking your candy bar. I can commit theft by stealing your car. If I use your car as a template to build an exact duplicate I'm not stealing it, I'm just copying it.

It's Copyright infringement, not theft. Theft REQUIRES I take something from you, like stealing your music CD's, not copying them.

Further the US government is seize a broad range of websites including websites based in non-US countries which sell duplicate merchandise (IE Nike knock-offs)

[General Zod]

Theft is theft. You want free music, use Pandora or iheart radio. Free books, look online or copypaste User Fiction or Fanfiction.net. Have you heard of Netflix? Use Gamefly to try before you buy. Does that mean you may have less shit on your hard drive? Yeah, but what you have is yours.

EDIT and to answer your question: the government is clearly operating within its mandate if the Web sites in question are not broadcasting paid for or licensed content. Complaining about it is like bitching that you have to call someone else for your pot because your current supplier is in jail.

I see someone needs a visual aid because they're too stupid to realize that the thread title isn't about piracy, it's about the government's right to just seize domains whether or not they actually host infringing material. In a number of cases the websites did not, in fact, host pirated files.

[Count Chocula]

Okay I stand corrected. If the Canadian government is siezing Web sites beyond its boundaries, it's also beyond its mandate. In-country, they are within rights. If the sites did not host pirated files the government is entirely in the wrong and will (hopefully) be liable to tort. Your original post BTW did NOT say the government siezed sites that didn't host pirated files...was that an oversight on your part or a bear trap? It may be within rights to block access to offshore sites, but that's not legal as far as I know in America, maybe it is in Canada.

And copyright infringement IIRC is still theft. Time, money, and fixed assets all go into producing copyrighted IP like music and videos. Piracy that produces illicit copies is still theft of the producer's funds.

[General Zod]

Okay I stand corrected. If the Canadian government is siezing Web sites beyond its boundaries, it's also beyond its mandate. In-country, they are within rights. If the sites did not host pirated files the government is entirely in the wrong and will (hopefully) be liable to tort. Your original post BTW did NOT say the government siezed sites that didn't host pirated files...was that an oversight on your part or a bear trap? It may be within rights to block access to offshore sites, but that's not legal as far as I know in America, maybe it is in Canada.

What original post are you babbling about? Are you smoking crack?

And copyright infringement IIRC is still theft. Time, money, and fixed assets all go into producing copyrighted IP like music and videos. Piracy that produces illicit copies is still theft of the producer's funds.

Except it's not theft. If it were theft we would not need a completely separate set of laws to cover it. Go read up on the issue further before spewing more nonsense. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... orrent.ars

[adam_grif]

And copyright infringement IIRC is still theft.

Nope, copyright infringement is copyright infringement. Legally and otherwise.

[Norade]

Okay I stand corrected. If the Canadian government is siezing Web sites beyond its boundaries, it's also beyond its mandate. In-country, they are within rights. If the sites did not host pirated files the government is entirely in the wrong and will (hopefully) be liable to tort. Your original post BTW did NOT say the government siezed sites that didn't host pirated files...was that an oversight on your part or a bear trap? It may be within rights to block access to offshore sites, but that's not legal as far as I know in America, maybe it is in Canada.

And copyright infringement IIRC is still theft. Time, money, and fixed assets all go into producing copyrighted IP like music and videos. Piracy that produces illicit copies is still theft of the producer's funds.

I made a post about the US gov't taking a site that shows sports games that I could get on basic cable for free. It may or may not have been hosted in the US based on a .net url. I was questioning if it was worth going after the site however because it popped right back up with a nicer interface after the move and the new site was easily found on google the same day as the site was seized. This site also did nothing but post links to other sites that hosted the content and thus was doing nothing wrong by any standard. Unless telling people where to get free stuff is illegal now.

Also, frankly, I could care less if Hollywood, major sports leagues, or the IRAA gets a cut of my money. I watch more free content on youtube than I do TV these days and most of the music I like has already been made and is something I can see a show for to support the artist. If I pirate a game and I don't care enough to buy it then you made a shitty game or that I bought it once and lost my disk. The fact is that people will pirate shit these days and that companies should try the business model of making money from ads rather than content.

EDIT: Sorry if this post is hard to follow, I've had a bit to drink and am not drunk but am some tipsy.

[General Zod]

Funnily enough, an article just popped up on Ars about this very topic. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... acking.ars

[Norade]

So what have any of these sites actually been charged with or is the US once again just sticking bloody sticky fingers into pies that it has no rights to touch?

[General Zod]

Providing links to infringing content is giving the means and opportunity to make it happen, and thus might fit the definition.


I pulled this reasoning out of my own brain, not any sources. I'm also not a lawyer. But, I believe that, yes, it is illegal to tell people where to do this, at least in bigger cases.

So how come the government hasn't gone after search engines? Arguably the easiest way to find pirated material is to type it into Google or Bing or something, and all they do is provide links.

[18-Till-I-Die]

The reality is nothing is ever going to "stop" piracy.

It's not just a losing battle it's a pointless one, since the second anything copyable is released it's free on the internet within hours, and I'm being conservitive. Realistically everything form leaks to simple determination means it may actually hit the internet before it hits the theatre or tv or music store or whatever, such as X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and that's just an example off the top of my head.

No one can stop or change this trend now, and I mean this literally as in it is impossible. PHYISICALLY impossible...see, the big problem is that the internet exists. Unless governments literally destroy it, or render it too expensive to use by some kind of pay-per-view set up (for the internet? I don't even know if that's possible) then it is now physically impossible to stop piracy.

We can go back and forth about "is piracy theft" or "is it wrong to pirate" all day but the fact remains that it is now an irrelevent question. The only relevent one is will the CONCEPT of intellectual property even still exist in the future, and all signs point to: no. It's been rendered unsustainable by the technology now present. Any song, any game, any movie or tv show is now available for free on literally thousands of sites across the internet. Short of a cataclysm that sends information technology back 50 years, IPs are an obsolete concept.

So either these people will have to find some other way to make money off of this, or they can continue to crack down and just drive people more and more to pirates simply because they have no other way to enjoy the product without being made to feel like a rube.

And before anyone asks I have no bright ideas myself. If I were to make a suggestion, and if given carte blanche to do whatever it takes to stop piracy (for whatever reason), I guess then outlawing computers and modems and enforcing the law with actual felony jail time akin to a major drug offense would simply take the technology out of the hands of the average citizen. If all computers are tightly controlled by the government that would, maybe, stop it. Assuming of course that no one found a way to jerry rig a computer and wi-fi, and that the government actually was willing to take such draconian measures.

But that's absurd and never going to happen, obviously.

[Eleas]

If I were to make a suggestion, and if given carte blanche to do whatever it takes to stop piracy (for whatever reason), I guess then outlawing computers and modems and enforcing the law with actual felony jail time akin to a major drug offense would simply take the technology out of the hands of the average citizen. If all computers are tightly controlled by the government that would, maybe, stop it. Assuming of course that no one found a way to jerry rig a computer and wi-fi, and that the government actually was willing to take such draconian measures.

But that's absurd and never going to happen, obviously.

Not to mention that it's a cartoonish scenario, and an incredibly elaborate one compared to more effective measures. Well, in the short term they would be effective and workable for whoever put them into practise; in the long term, they may well deal a blow to the Internet as a whole.

In order to control a network (or break it apart), you can police said network fairly effectively as long as you retain top-level control over it. In this case, that would be the DNS root servers, the cloud service providers, the WAN links (Frame Relay circuits et al), and the backbone as a whole. If you can decide what goes there and do it systematically, you can also police it. Unlike your scenario, this is a conceptually practical solution, or it can at least be presented as such to people whose appreciation of IT technology ends as soon as it's no longer under their control.

No doubt a lot of these people think the Internet would work just as well with a bit more order, and that if they don't assume control over these "unclaimed" assets then someone else will. They have no appreciation for the damage this can do to that which actually makes the Internet tick, which is reciprocity. Because if you can't trust a server (which can be anywhere) to be at the same address tomorrow (perhaps because a foreign government decided it wanted a peek at your research data in order to fight Terror or Drugs) then basically the whole system falls apart.

[General Zod]

1) They provide a legitimate service too. These other sites only reason for existing is to facilitate crime.

In at least one case this is arguably untrue. Exactly how far the government investigates these sites before deciding to seize their domains is questionable.

The New York Times caught up this weekend with the Queens resident who ran dajaz1.com, who noted his own puzzlement at having his domain seized without warning:

After being shown the affidavit, the operator of dajaz1.com — a widely read hip-hop blog that posts new songs and videos — disputed many of the warrant’s examples of what it called copyright infringement. He said that, like much of the material on his site, the songs had been sent to him for promotional purposes by record labels and the artists.

As proof, the operator, a Queens man who declined to give his real name but is known online as Splash, showed The New York Times several e-mails from record label employees and third-party marketers offering songs mentioned in the affidavit.

“It’s not my fault if someone at a record label is sending me the song,” Splash said.

And, I'm not sure about this, but probably also 3) if asked, they'd comply; they don't have to be forced.

Many of the sites seized received no notification whatsoever before they were taken down, so it's impossible to say whether or not any of them would have complied with a request.

[General Zod]

The government might be sloppy here, but I suspect we aren't hearing the whole story either.

I suspect the guys in charge are just idiots.

"Based on my participation in the investigation, I have learned that there is a 'domino effect' to online piracy… Domestic industries lose approximately $25.6 billion a year in revenue to piracy, the domestic economy loses nearly 375,000 jobs either directly or indirectly related to online piracy, and American workers lose more than $16 billion in annual earnings as result of copyright infringement."

Reynolds didn't "learn" any of this by researching the complex effects of illegal file-sharing on Big Content (bad), concert revenues (good), consumer bank balances (good), superstars (possibly bad), and lesser-known artists (probably good). He learned it from speaking with the movie and music businesses, whose representatives appear to have basically directed this investigation.

In 2009, the songwriters' collection agency SESAC talked about online piracy and Congress' recent allocation of $30 million to help address it. Then-head of the MPAA, Dan Glickman, said that the government had to act "due to the negative domino effect on the industry and its employees. 'Copyright industries in the US lose $25.6 billion a year in revenue to piracy, the U.S. economy loses nearly 375,000 jobs either directly or indirectly related to the copyright industry, and American workers lose more than $16 billion in annual earnings,' he said." Sound familiar?

Consider, for instance, this excruciating description of BitTorrent: "A Bit torrent (referred to in short as 'torrent' or 'torrent file') is a files distribution system used for transferring files across a network of people." Yikes. Would you put this man in charge of your computer crime investigations?

[dragon]

Except piracy is theft after all when the pirates commited piracy they sure weren't copying the goods they were taking. That aside proper term is copyright infrigment.

[Havok]

Bad ass, doesn't just mean a disobedient donkey. Turns out words evolve over time to incorporate new meanings. I was sure that dictionaries have been putting multiple definitions for single words in them for ages, but I could be wrong.

[Broomstick]

So... let me get this straight. A bunch of people who feel it's OK to take things off the internet without asking and without payment are now pissed off because some other people took other things off the internet without asking and without payment?

[Mr Bean]

So... let me get this straight. A bunch of people who feel it's OK to take things off the internet without asking and without payment are now pissed off because some other people took other things off the internet without asking and without payment?

That would be totally incorrect, great job Broomstick. You missed not some of the points, but all of them

The domain mains seized involved people who make off-brand items and search engines, not any download sites.

[Broomstick]

But there are people saying it's OK to pirate shit?

Tell me, how are the makers of all the wonderful things people see fit to download without paying supposed to make a living? Unless of course something is released to the public domain, but most people making music/art/programs whatever would like something in return for their efforts.

Let's go back to the OP, shall we?

This comes because the site I normally watched sports on was just seized, and already on google you can find the same hosts with their new address providing the same content as before with the exact same url subsitution .net for .me.

It's a search engine you can watch sports on? He's watching off-brand sports?

It just seems like they're playing whack-a-mole trying to stop piracy and frankly I find it stupid to waste people's tax money even trying. Though not providing links or anything because of board rules I will say that 1 person out of 20 in my communications class pays for most music and movies and the rest might buy something they really like. I'd guess that for most people in their 20's this is the way of things.

Again - these people want the "music and movies and the rest" but only 1 in 20 is willing to pay anything at all for them. Again - how do these expect these people who create this stuff to make a living? Or maybe it's just the 20 somethings are sponging off mom and dad still and don't understand the concept of earning a living yet.

What are the board's thoughts on this matter?

My thought is that piracy - whether downloading music or watching sports via websites that show copyright broadcasts without permission - is theft. Unless that sports site is a legitimate site for sports broadcasts, but somehow that wasn't the impression I got.

Of course, the government seizing assets without due process is also a form of theft. But then, if you think it's OK to access copyrighted stuff and make copies without permission then obviously you don't understand the concept of intellectual property or copyright, which makes it baffling that you'd get so upset about the government seizing something you think either doesn't exist, shouldn't exist, or has no value. After all the government isn't destroying anything here, or taking a physical object, it's just making the thing hard or impossible to find. The originator still has the coding, right? Nothing has really been taken, right?

[General Zod]

But there are people saying it's OK to pirate shit?

As far as I can tell nobody in this thread is claiming that.

It's a search engine you can watch sports on? He's watching off-brand sports?

Go read this.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has 10 tough questions for the department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), all of which can be more easily summed up in a single, blunter question: what the hell are you guys doing over there?

Wyden's displeasure is over ICE's Operation In Our Sites, the controversial program that began seizing Internet domain names last year, and just grabbed several more sports-related domains this week. The seizures are all signed off on by a federal judge, but the affected parties get no warning and no chance to first challenge the claim that they are running illegal businesses. In fact, in yesterday's takedown, ICE grabbed the domain Rojadirecta.org, a site that links to live sports on the Web and has twice been declared legal by Spanish courts.

While different countries of course have different laws, and what may be allowable in one country would be illegal in the US, Wyden raises the obvious question of turnabout: "Did [Department of Justice] and ICE take into account the legality of Rojadirecta.org before it ceased its domain name? ... What standard does DoJ expect foreign countries to use when determining whether to seize a domain name controlled in the US for copyright infringement?"

His other questions are just as pointed, and they're all contained in a letter to ICE director John Morton. Wyden asks whether merely linking to infringing online content is illegal (several of the seized domain names did not host any infringing content themselves). He wants to know why the domain names are being seized, but why there's no attempt to prosecute those behind the sites, if these are really criminals. And he wants ICE to keep (and make public) a list of the companies that have lobbied for any particular site's name to be seized, all to ensure that “Operation In Our Sites is not used to create competitive advantages in the marketplace.”

Wyden also digs into one specific case, last year's seizure of the dajaz1.com domain name. The site, which blogged about music and hosted some downloads, was claimed to infringe on copyrights, but Wyden notes that press reports later showed that many of the songs on the site had been provided to its operator directly by music industry executives. Despite the stories, ICE made no move apparent move to look into the case or restore the site's original domain name. Wyden wants "the Administration's justification for continued seizure of this domain name and its rationale for not providing this domain name operator, and others, due process.”

Just in case ICE had any doubts about Wyden's hostility to the entire process, the Senator makes his broader position clear:

In contrast to ordinary copyright litigation, the domain name seizure process does not appear to give targeted websites an opportunity to defend themselves before sanctions are imposed. As you know, there is an active and contentious legal debate about when a website may be held liable for infringing activities by its users. I worry that domain name seizures could function as a means for end-running the normal legal process in order to target websites that may prevail in full court. The new enforcement approach used by Operation In Our Sites is alarmingly unprecedented in the breadth of its potential reach...

For the Administration's efforts to be seen as legitimate, it should be able to defend its use of the forfeiture laws by prosecuting operators of domain names and provide a means to ensure due process. If the federal government is going to take property and risk stifling speech, it must be able to defend those actions not only behind closed doors but also in a court of law.

My thought is that piracy - whether downloading music or watching sports via websites that show copyright broadcasts without permission - is theft.

Obviously you need to read the diagram I posted earlier as well. It's not theft. That doesn't make it acceptable, but the two are not the same by any stretch of the definition.

Of course, the government seizing assets without due process is also a form of theft. But then, if you think it's OK to access copyrighted stuff and make copies without permission then obviously you don't understand the concept of intellectual property or copyright, which makes it baffling that you'd get so upset about the government seizing something you think either doesn't exist, shouldn't exist, or has no value. After all the government isn't destroying anything here, or taking a physical object, it's just making the thing hard or impossible to find. The originator still has the coding, right? Nothing has really been taken, right?

Except the country the domain was owned in that the US government seized specifically allows such rebroadcasts. The US is ignoring another country's laws and due process in order to enforce its own, and if it can just seize a domain owned by another country without due process then the whole concept of the internet begins to break down.

[thejester]

Again - these people want the "music and movies and the rest" but only 1 in 20 is willing to pay anything at all for them. Again - how do these expect these people who create this stuff to make a living? Or maybe it's just the 20 somethings are sponging off mom and dad still and don't understand the concept of earning a living yet.

Oh shit maybe they'll have to pay Alexander Ovechkin 11 million a year instead of 12 million.

Seriously, the idea that me 'stealing' an NHL game which I could not watch on broadcast TV in Australia even if I had cable is putting people out of work is so stupid as to be laughable. But then again, I live in a country where sporting clubs exist to win, not to turn a profit so I guess I've got a crazy egalitarian perspective on the whole thing.

[Soontir C'boath]

Again - these people want the "music and movies and the rest" but only 1 in 20 is willing to pay anything at all for them. Again - how do these expect these people who create this stuff to make a living? Or maybe it's just the 20 somethings are sponging off mom and dad still and don't understand the concept of earning a living yet.

Oh shit maybe they'll have to pay Alexander Ovechkin 11 million a year instead of 12 million.

Seriously, the idea that me 'stealing' an NHL game which I could not watch on broadcast TV in Australia even if I had cable is putting people out of work is so stupid as to be laughable. But then again, I live in a country where sporting clubs exist to win, not to turn a profit so I guess I've got a crazy egalitarian perspective on the whole thing.

This would be a compelling argument if it wasn't for the fact that there is an on-line subscription option that is available to Australians from NHL Game Center Live

[18-Till-I-Die]

If it is 1 in 20 now, in ten years it'll be 1 in 200 who actually buy ths stuff legit. I'm not even joking, I'm basing that of watching people around me. And not just "20 somethings living in their mom's basement" but adults.

You want to know what makes most people pirates? It's not some "row row fight the powah!" rebellious streak in their 20s, it's because they feel like theyr'e being treated like assholes by a multibillion dollar company run by assholes with slicked back hair trying to play at Gordon Gekko, being told to pay for something that someone else is providing for beyond free online. And not just free of charge but free of bullshit spyware and gimmicks to try and prevent piracy, which makes the legit buyer feel like he's the criminal somehow. So after the third or fourth time a company floods their games with absurd anti-piracy spyware and DRM or DMR or whatever it's called, they just get fed up and they say "You know what, fuck it, if they're going to treat me like I stole it then I'm stealing it" and that's an exact quote.

Instead of arguing over wether or not piracy is theft, because it is so beyond irrelevent now even if it is, we should ask a more important question:

Will it ever be possible to make people pay for something that they can get for free, from a free site, using free technology provided for free on the free internet?

[General Zod]

Will it ever be possible to make people pay for something that they can get for free, from a free site, using free technology provided for free on the free internet?

Ever heard of the Humble Bundle? Yes, it's possible.